


Chemical Love

by DesertUrbania



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Caribbean Coalition, Caribbean OC, Dirty Talk, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Jesse McCree is a Little Shit, Mentions of alcoholism, Mild S&M, Moral injury, OC of colour, Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Use of Caribbean History, Violence, and a dirty talker, woc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 02:06:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19263790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertUrbania/pseuds/DesertUrbania
Summary: There was something about a post-Overwatch world that grated on him. Now, he was able to take on the jobs he wanted to—the ones he truly thought were worth his time, but still. One man could only do so much.Then, the call came.His first mission back was everything he hated. It was full of politics, red tape and reminded him of all the reasons he’d left. However, that mission had given him something else: woman driven by duty, slinging a gun one day and sweet-talking politicians the next—all wrapped up in pristine frills and kitten heels.He couldn’t quite pin her down, but something told him it was a challenge he'd love to take on.





	Chemical Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! This fic idea has been knocking around my head for a bit, and as I've gotten a huge chunk written in between my main Attack On Titan fic, I decided to go ahead and post!
> 
> Veronica is an OC that came to me when I considered the Caribbean Coalition and what sort of soldier would work there. Being Caribbean myself, I was really pleased to see the addition of Baptiste, so it gave me a few ideas. This fic is going to have a heavy plot and will be quite ridden with politics. Not party politics, mind you, but as a sociologist, it was reaaaally difficult to conceptualise a story with characters like this without it! As the loose plot of Overwatch borrows from transnational politics, this fic does the same, with an emphasis on the navigations within the region as a collection of 'third world' countries.

[2071]

_Sometimes, the thick accents around her reminded her that she was home—that even without her parents, her room and her things, she was among her people._

_Other times? Their lilting gossip grated on her skin, rubbing it raw with its matter-of-fact monotone drawl._

_“Ey, you know who that is?”_

_Eyes turned to her—she was just trying to finish the exercise in her dog-eared composition notebook, and she felt their gazes boring into the back of her head._

_“Ha, you’re late to the party. We know that girl is a Francois. A ‘big man’ from the capital came down looking for someone and spotted her. What is she doing here? We don’t know.”_

_“So” there was a pause and a good-natured poke. “You’re getting some of that government money, eh? How much her parents were worth again?”_

_The woman made a non-committal noise in her throat. “God alone knows. You think they were ever honest about that? The only one who knows the real number is the one dishing out the cash.”_

_“And who’s that?”_

_“Some rich man, again. He’ll probably come and take her away, and we’ll just end up some footnote in a fluff story about her being alive and the last of her family.”_

_She turned meekly to look at them—they noticed and shook their heads in her direction. There was disapproval there, but she wasn’t sure why. Few people, after the incident were accepting. Even Zara, her babysitter, had a limit. That’s why she was here._

_The woman sighed, and began to walk over—Veronica panicked, she hadn’t actually finished her writing—_

Insistent banging on her door sent her flying off the bed in a flurry, clutching her sidearm and glaring sleepily into the darkness.

“Who’s there?” she called, her voice croaking with sleep.

“Lieutenant, it’s me!” she knew the voice at once—it was Solomon, her assistant. “Come out here now—the Siberian Omnium reactivated—it’s chaos.”

“You’re kidding me. Is it an isolated incident—or is it a war again?” she tripped over herself to grab a robe from her dark closet and flung open the door. Still clad in his pyjamas, the man was ashen and sickly looking.

He shook his head, but his face remained plastered with uncertainty. “It’s isolated to Russia for now, but we’ve been getting intel from some of the other countries. The Russian ambassador was busting down the door a few minutes ago. We gave her some tea and put her in the meeting room.”

Veronica slid to a halt. “We’ll step in?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so—but the Brigadier and the General are outside, they want to meet with you. They’ll confirm what we’re doing.”

She tore a hand through her dishevelled hair as they continued down the hall, coming to a stop at a foyer, where other staff and soldiers, obviously thrown out of their beds as well, were milling around. The crowd parted as a man walked through the room, clad in a mussed dress shirt and looking utterly careworn.

“Lieutenant,” General Edwards greeted her dryly.

“Sir,” she saluted. “What’s happened?”

He jerked his head towards the offices. “Come on. It’s a long story and we’re short on time.”

\---

[The American Midwest]

“What the—?”

McCree halted his journey through the silent streets. A TV, situated in a nearby bar had caught his eye when he’d glanced in, hoping for a quick nightcap. Emblazoned across the screen were scenes of chaos, all underlined with the headline “Omnics wage war on Russia” in a blood red font.

He pushed in, finding that everyone had gone deadly still, their eyes glued to the various screens in horror—some patrons were in tears, while others were gaping, as though they were witnessing the impossible. The bartender stood with her arms folded stiffly, staring up with the others, a dishrag thrown over her shoulder.

“How long ago did this report come in?” he asked quietly. His voice echoed through the room anyway, its only competition a few stifled sobs.

The woman looked down at him, blinking a few times to clear her vision from the effects of the bright TV. “’Bout a half an hour ago. It happened last night, but somehow we just found out.”

Of course. The government likely kept a heavy lid on the whole thing, until the news started leaking out. No one wanted panic—and no one wanted the obligation of _doing_ anything.

“We have to do something,” a man nearby said in a low voice. “Are we just sitting here and waiting for them to come get us? Why hasn’t the president made a statement? Where is the UN?”

 _Sitting on their hands, like they do._ He drew up a stool and sighed. The heavy cloak was a bit much for the weather right now, and he was feeling the exhaustion of the heat particularly badly tonight. At the very least, it hid the arm well enough—people tended to stare otherwise.

He ordered a whiskey, snapping the bartender back to her job. What would they have done, if things were different?

But that was the wrong question, wasn’t it? It was all connected. The way that Overwatch was tied to the UN’s bureaucracy necessitated what they’d done—it all began with that. There’d be no need for Blackwatch without all the red tape—but then, red tape was just the way of the world. Otherwise, there’d be countries squabbling like a bunch of playground children over a dropped toy. It ended up like that anyway despite it all—and the illusion of their independence faded when the war quieted down. When the superpowers of the world chugged along, rebuilding their fractured power and influence, the UN’s impartiality returned to a farce.

_Yeah, yeah, we’re just a third party. Don’t mind the fact that most of our donations come from three countries._

It always remained the same.

He shook off the nostalgia, washing it down with the burn of alcohol. This was better now—it was how it had to be. He’d work on his own terms. He was accountable to one man, and that was himself, which came with freedom and a sense of responsibility that he relished.

The screen was filled with landscapes of carnage, horrified civilians speaking in shell-shocked, foreign tongues. There was just one more inconvenient reality.

_One man can’t do shit in the face of this._

\---

On its face, being an Ambassador required a rather different set of skills than being a solider; Veronica, however, found they were very nearly the same in many ways. Sure, there was the whole sense of duty, the unflinching sense of responsibility, and cultivating an upper lip stiff enough to cut glass—but the arts of politics and war carried an intimacy that fostered inhumanity.

She looked at people and ended their lives—and now, she was facing her Russian counterpart and essentially doing the same with words. She knew Olesya well enough—in fact they got along rather well, during her time as the Ambassador for the coalition. The woman’s usually pleasant mask had slipped long before the meeting began—that was one advantage the soldiers had over the civilians. They were accustomed to war, they took part in and were inured to it. Meanwhile, the civilians watched it happen around them, waiting to be consumed by whatever spilled over. Veronica had been there herself, and she understood what Olesya was feeling. To be helpless was to be angry and afraid.

“We have invested in this region!” she barked, slamming her hand onto the table with enough force to hurt herself. She winced, but blinked through the pain, focusing her wrath on the younger woman, clad in her sleepwear with a military jacket thrown over. “There have been signed concordats that say we may request aid in times of crisis.”

“Yes, we’ve noted the request Ambassador, but as we’ve outlined, we cannot take immediate action,” the words felt hollow on her tongue. Veronica still felt the shadow of her own anger as she argued with the General—she’d refused to stand down until her immediate superior, Brigadier Lee, turned up and chewed her out. This felt wrong. Yet she was standing here doing it. _Following orders._ “We must observe until we are able to fully assess the situation. The Caribbean Coalition is a small military force compared to those elsewhere. We have to be judicious.”

“How can you refuse? People are being killed in the hundreds! You all lived this. You’re telling me that you’d doom others to the same fate?”

“This isn’t a refusal, Your Excellency, it’s a request for time,”

“I know what it is, I play this game too, Veronica.”

And so she did. Stalling was as good as saying no, without uttering that dreaded word. Olesya stood up, her disgust plain.

“We’ll remember who was first to come to our aid, just as we’ll remember who hid. As an orphan of the first crisis, I expected better. You’re allowing children to go through exactly what you did.”

As she stormed out, Veronica stood stiffly for a moment, waiting until the footsteps retreated before sagging against the table. She felt sick—utterly sick. It was happening again, and they were doing nothing. All the pipe dreams they sold, the promise of defending the world against the horrors that children like her had witnessed—she knew in her heart they were all lies.

There was just something about confronting it like this that made it all too real.

\---

[2177]

Years later, the crisis had slowed to a fizzle, with bursts of activity here and there, and little international intervention past ‘ _we are monitoring the situation closely’._ Veronica had spent those years lobbying, getting yelled at and trudging up the ladder to Colonel. Technically, she was now one of the main field advisers to the field generals, delivering valuable information and developing plans. The reality, however, was that she had to do all those things while tied up in the web of politics across several countries and perpetually angry businesspeople. Often enough, this meant that her carefully thought out courses of action—helped along by the rather expensive education that the coalition had bought her were bastardised beyond recognition.

Today was going to be another of those long, thankless marathons. The heads of governments were busy being annoyed about trade, while the crime rates of many of their countries were creeping upwards. Unrest was growing, and in an effort to cobble together as much goodwill as possible for the coming swath of elections, they were leaning on the military. Demanding _patrols_ of all things, in civilian areas, and ‘outreach’—whatever that truly meant anymore. In her younger, more starry-eyed days, she’d be putting together multi-phase research proposals and policy changes to go with their on-the-ground activities, but now, she bitterly stamped requisition forms for short-lived programmes that basically took all the money, time and effort, and set it on fire.

No one had the time or care for anything beyond an election cycle. If it didn’t help a party consolidate power, it was useless. She knew she’d become jaded, but she liked to think she’d learned to pick her battles. With each new government, she allowed herself to _hope_ for a sympathetic ear, but instead, it was just _the same shit, on a different day_.

Solomon brought two mugs of tea, taking his seat at her desk to begin sorting through the day’s work.

“You already look pissed.” The man knew her well—after all, they’d known each other for a good eighteen years. “You have to stop studying all this nonsense. Unless the stress is driving you to cook, because, well, I could use a break from microwaved dinners.”

“Ha. I’ve got a whole chicken to myself at home. Come by later and you’ll get something that won’t make you lose your will to live,” she told him with a grin. As he passed her the first stack of papers, it slowly vanished. “I’m just thinking about how I got here. When I thought about where I’d be at twenty-seven, being a paper pusher fantasizing about the revolution wasn’t it.”

“The candidate we think will push through in Jamaica isn’t bad,” he pointed out. “She’s been willing to listen.”

“Yeah, but for how long?” she sighed. “She probably will win narrowly and she’ll need to reach across to the rest of them, and then what?”

“Spinning your wheels in mud,” Solomon gave a long sigh. “I mean, it’s one thing to be harassing them all the time to look past their own noses, but,” he lowered his voice. “It’s a whole other thing when our own damn people are doing the same. You heard that the General is thinking of loaning us to the countries for law enforcement?”

“Yes, and I might actually just swan-dive into the sea if it goes through.”

“I know the war is over and all that,” he said bitterly. “But they _know_ we aren’t supposed to be doing this. They just want the cheques from each yearly budget.”

Veronica scoffed. “We make enough on our own, we just squander it. Besides, it’s the power they want to keep too. Our legitimacy comes from these governments.”

“And you have to go sweet-talk them,” Solomon pointed to the paper at the top of the stack. “The next regional meeting is in a month. Hilariously enough it’s being held at the UN headquarters in New York,”

“Of course, they like to meddle too,” she groaned. Her next complaint was cut short by the frantic ringing of her phone. Veronica glanced at the number and winced.

“Good morning, sir.”

Brigadier Lee’s voice was clipped. “We need you to take a command appointment for a new operation,”

Veronica looked at her phone in surprise. “Sir? You’re sending me into the field?”

“I know we haven’t discussed this with you, but it came up suddenly. We’ve got some eyes and ears on the ground in the Leewards, and we’re expecting a Talon attack.”

She sat up straighter. “On who? Or what, exactly?”

“Gang territory, if you can believe it. They want to start an all-out war.”

_Shit. Shit shit shit shit._

“This is a delicate op then. What’s our squad like, sir? And what’s the forecast for Talon’s attack?”

“Your squad is your discretion. I trust your ability to do this, and at the very least, you deserve to choose who goes out there with you. As for Talon, we think they’re sending in the big guns. Probably nothing too obvious, since they’re trying to make this seem like an enemy gang attack, so it’ll be small and lethal.”

“Okay, and have we considered talking to the leaders about this? Forewarning them?” she knew it was a futile question. The dons hated the military, and for good reason. “Even if they slam the door in our face, we can at least try.”

“No, we can’t. Optics are already bad with us talking to the crime lords up in Guyana during that rogue omnic skirmish. The public wants us to put them down, not cooperate.”

“I understand that, but we know that even if we kill them, more of them will come. Gangs don’t spring up out of the ether,” Veronica argued. “At that point, we’re just wholesale murdering them and not trying to fix anything.”

“Yes, I know you’re particularly annoyed by this given your academic work,” the Brigadier sounded tired. “But without politicians and other boots on the ground on board, lofty ideas about legislation and policy aren’t going to happen.” Veronica sighed, waiting for the phrase she knew was coming.

“You need to be realistic.”

With that, the call was cut unceremoniously, leaving her glaring at her phone with irritation. Solomon made a motion for her to pass the papers back to him.

“I’ll cover for you.”

“How do you know I’m not dragging you with me?”

Solomon grinned. “And risk some dumbass messing up your work? Nah.”

“Touché. Try not to rearrange my office while I’m gone,” she gave him a little wave. At least she could count on him. That made, what, one person in the whole base?

She exited the room, feeling more than a little annoyed. The base was a hive of activity, with officers and enlisted soldiers alike skittering about, murmuring to each other in hushed, worried tones. She knew they’d been downplaying exactly how deadly of a situation they were in. If this Talon attack was successful—it could destabilize the whole country.

One country out of a region that needed stability, and needed all its elements working for the coalition to remain viable.

What was that old-world phrase? _One from ten leaves nought_.

More than a hundred years had passed, and yet, the same problems remained.

Veronica turned into the med bay, nodding to the nurses and assistants at the front desk. Her heels clicked softly against the carefully polished floor, competing only with the soft beeps of machines and the rustle of papers on charts. At the station near the far end of the hallway, a lone doctor scribbled away at his notes, unaware of her approach until her footsteps had drowned out everything else around him.

“Colonel Francois,” he stood up, shutting his notebook and extending an ungloved hand.

She shook it; as always, it was slightly cold from all of the air conditioning, and slightly dry from all the hand-washing. “Dr. Yeung, I assume you’ve heard of the next mission?”

He nodded. “You need a top-up, I assume,” he immediately went to the sink, washing his hands thoroughly and putting on a pair of gloves. “I drew up your dose already.”

“I always trust you to be efficient,” Veronica sat on the edge of the bed, with the paper near the edge for a patient’s feet crinkling slightly as she moved.

Dr. Yeung moved a small, white device with a flat, rectangular screen across her left upper arm. It was a matter of routine now; he’d been attending to her long enough now to know the location of her implant by heart. The screen lit up, beeping lightly when it hovered over the right spot of her skin. He marked it off with a purple pen, picking the syringe off the nearby tray without delay.

Veronica winced as the needle went in. The shots always burned, leaving her entire arm feeling entirely out-of-sorts with a strange sequence of numbness and warmth for a good fifteen minutes. She, like all the other soldiers of Unit 809, knew how to self-administer the shot, but their access to the tiny vials of milky, reddish liquid was tightly controlled.

Dr. Yeung discarded the used needle, his gloved hand massaging the area until her entire arm was filled with the annoying tingling. “Measure your levels before and after the mission; your bodycam should pick up your activity, so I could use the data for your usage.”

“Is anyone else seeing action, or is it just me?”

He sighed. “Phillips in Bermuda did a mission last month, but that’s about it. Out of the fourteen of you all, it’s been slow.”

“Well, I guess no one wants to come all the way out here to get refilled,” she smiled slightly. “But you’ll get your data.”

The doctor gave her a satisfied grin, and moved to clear up his space. Though the ward looked like any other—this was the most secure area of the entire base, save for the prisons. The vial went back into its refrigerated safe, and was shut away from the world again. Veronica opened and closed her fist rhythmically as she walked down to the armoury. With a silent salute, she was let in, where her uniform and weapons lay.

Time was short, and they would take at least an hour to reach the other end of the region, even in their fastest aircraft.

[Caribbean Coalition - Leewards Base]

“Veronica, where’s that cute assistant you had hanging around your coattails?” Davika sounded disappointed, her melodic accent cutting through the whispers of breeze through the bush around them. The cohort had arrived merely a few minutes earlier, and she’d been on her way to the communications centre to finalise their plans before she briefed her group.

Veronica grinned. “I left him on the base for his own safety. Couldn’t let you get your hands on him, could I?”

The taller woman gave a dramatic sigh, flipping her corkscrew curls with a flourish. “Gosh. It’s like you know me.”

The two women continued the short walk, trading easy banter. Davika was like her—one of the few soldiers brought up together, in Unit 809. As such, they were closer than many of the others; there was something about such close quarters in this landscape that created an intimacy unmatched by regular war comrades. Native to one of the countries at the very bottom of the region, Davika was eternally and quite vocally bitter about being placed so far from home. Even as orphans, the children retained their attachment to their countries. All these little islands and forested, mainland countries were distinct in their own way—living in the region itself was fine, but there was nothing compared to being _home_.

As they reached the comm. office, she turned slightly up-tilted eyes to Veronica. “Just so you know, I put myself on the mission too.”

Veronica wasn’t surprised, but she feigned it, as was their routine. “My, Dr. Yeung is going to be over the moon to get more data. How’d you manage that?”

“I smiled sweetly and told Brigadier Jain my thoughts, obviously,” she said exaggeratedly. “But seriously, I nagged her until she said yes, so I’d shut up.”

“How are you never court martialed?”

“I’m _irreplaceable_ , you should try it sometime.”

“I wonder what’s more irreplaceable, your abilities or your mouth?” Veronica chided her lightly. Davika had a point. She was the best soldier on this side of the coalition. The Leewards weren’t generally the most armed section of the region, mostly due to the strategic need for larger groups of soldiers elsewhere, near more conflict-ridden areas—especially near Latin America and the greater American continent itself. They’d had far too many close calls when insurrection began brewing. First it was Omnic terrorists, then it was Vishkar and their nonsense in Brazil. Veronica was tired of it all.

She could ask why no one could leave their blasted region alone—but as an ambassador, she knew the reasons all too well.  
  
Their radio lines had been declared ready, and the women collected the earpieces for their ten-soldier squad. Luckily, at this time of the year, there was no interference from any weird weather happenings out in the oceans to throw out any of the equipment on the smaller islands. Davika was already in her own uniform, with her rifle slung across her back. She was one of the better shots in their unit, and was pretty adept in pushing forward to gain ground while other soldiers would shrink away. Veronica gave her the usual role of second—the machine gunner of their squad. The other soldiers she’d chosen were all generally experienced, with little rust on them as they’d come from some of the more active areas.

As they were about ready to set off, Veronica looked at her comrade pointedly. “Your levels are good, right?”

Davika scoffed. “Yeah, I don’t get much cause to use anything out here. It’s good. Also, did I mention your call-sign is bullshit? Why do I have to be Lusca—a _sea monster_? Asuri is so much cooler.”

The jet took off with a lurch that the women ignored. “Do you even know what it means?”

“You told me once, and I honestly feel like I wasn’t listening.”

Veronica grinned. “It’s a spirit, but it’s been used to describe female demons. Apparently they’re ugly, sabre-toothed and all that.”

“Did they hate us when they gave us these signs?”

Veronica shrugged. “Probably. Apparently we were a handful; you always did like to make a mess in the bath. Remember the time you filled the whole room with suds?”

“Oh shut up, you had fun.”

“Right.”

The jet reached cruising altitude within a few minutes, leaving Veronica to abandon her banter and finish briefing the team. If all went well, it’d be a short mission. They’d intercept the Talon team, eliminate them, and maybe, if she was lucky, she’d be able to speak to the civilian men and women on the ground. They might just listen to her, and if they knew what was afoot...perhaps they could avoid an all out war if the situation repeated itself.

“Asuri, Sergeant Lane from comm. here,” her earpiece buzzed. “We got an issue.” A beep signalled the end of the message.

“Asuri copying. What’s going on?”

“Reports of sporadic firefights in the neighbourhood near the drop-zone. I think we might be too late.”

The team looked towards her, their faces grim. Davika was muttering curses under her breath.

“We’re headed into an active confrontation?”

“Looks like it. Satellite shows sparse groups, but they’re covering a lot of ground. Like a skirmish.”

Veronica grimaced. “Alright. Copied. We’ll see what can be done.”

The soldiers were dispatched into a neighbourhood that looked more like a post-apocalyptic warzone than somewhere habitable. Bullet holes pockmarked the brick houses with their chipped, fading paint, and the sounds of yelling, cursing and screams cut through the air, punctuated by gunfire.

Veronica turned to her team. “We’re going to try not to get too involved yet. I want to find someone who looks like they’re in charge and see if we can diffuse the situation eventually. If you see anything that looks like Talon, though, shoot.”

They moved in a slow wedge formation, down the street. At the top, near a worn little dry goods shop, was the unmoving body of a man, riddled with bullet holes, his arms flung around himself as though he’d been running when he was shot.

_Shit._

Through her helmet, the world seemed just a little further away. She could still smell the blood in the air, but through the perspex visor, it felt like she was watching this all from the sidelines. A knot of men were congregated at the edge of the fighting, all quarreling with one another and shoving each other around. At the sight of them, some scattered, running into the line of fire, while others froze.

Veronica held up her hand, palm facing towards them. Then, she lowered her own rifle, holding it loosely, but with her finger never far from the trigger guard.

“We’re from the coalition. What happened?”

Through all the jostling and yelling, she managed to hear that the gang members had been ambushed while walking back from a meeting. Veronica frowned.

“By who?”

“All of them,” a man said bitterly. “You hear all that? It’s all the blocks. They joined up.”

Veronica stared. All the other gangs? That kind of coordination was nearly impossible. “That can’t be right. Where’s your boss?”

He pointed to the next street over, where a lone two-storey building stood. “If we let them through here, they’ll kill him.”

Veronica nodded. “We’ll go check on him.”

\---

As it turned out, the don was dead.

He was sprawled out on his living room floor, the TV still blaring in the background. Veronica rolled him over, ensuring her camera caught the strange, clammy-looking pallor of his skin.

“That doesn’t look normal, does it?”

Davika shook her head. “No, he hasn’t been shot or anything, and the blood should really be pooling towards his face if he’s been like this. There wouldn’t have been time for it to settle to make him _this_ pale even if he was on his back,” she lifted him and peeked at his back under his shirt. “No pooled blood there either.”

“Asuri,” one of the soldiers’ voices sparked to life on the earpiece. “One of the gang members wants to be let in.”

“Great,” she sighed. “I’ll meet him out on the porch.”

She heard a scuffle, and the sound of cursing.

“Shit, he shoved past me!”

The other soldier made an annoyed sound, sucking the spit through his teeth. “Why can’t you do your job?”

“What did you want me to do, _shoot him_?”

“Oy, shut up and keep an eye out,” she hissed. The men quieted at once.

Veronica stood up, holding her rifle a little firmer now. The man’s footsteps echoed across the wooden floor, coming to a stop as he met the sight on the living room floor.

“But what the…”

“We found him like this, when did you all leave?”

The man was shaking his head repeatedly. “No, that isn’t right. He texted us down there. Asked me to come because some soldiers were up in his house,” his face was growing more and more livid. “I see how it is. You all are with them too.”

Davika cursed. She wasn’t sure who fired first, but the moment the man’s hand closed around the handle sticking out of his waistband, they both ducked down and shot him. He fell back, slamming into the glass door and breaking it before crumpling dead to the floor.

As if on cue, she could hear more of the men converging around the house. They’d been set up in this too. Talon had known they were coming; soon the word would spread that the coalition wasn’t just working with gangs, they were working with a few selected groups in a civil war. This would be a nightmare.

But she couldn’t think about that now. She needed to rally her men, and she needed to survive.

Veronica hissed a command to her men to take cover in the house. The civilians were no match for the soldiers, even outnumbered; while reassuring, it was something she took little pleasure in. Bodies upon bodies fell outside, with Veronica hunkering down near the front porch, her uniform’s cloaking mechanism on, melting into the scenery. Davika was at the far end of the house, and she could just make out her friend’s boots as they jerked with each shot.

What had seemed like an eternity was likely about ten minutes. The streets lay still, with dust, blood and bodies strewn about. The distant firefight continued. She moved up to the second storey porch and took inventory of what was lying in the street.

“Fuck,” Veronica shut off the cloak, noting there was about five minutes left on its life. She wanted to throw something, to punch something. “Fucking shit. Comm, reporting in.”

“Sergeant Lane here, copying.”

“The firefight is down two streets over, we had one of our own down here. It started with the dead don, and I think we’ve been set up. I think we’ve cleared everyone.”

“How many dead?”

“Hard to say,” Veronica sighed. “Listen, I didn’t come here to kill all these people like this. What in the world went wrong? How could we let this happen?”

The soldier at the other end of the earpiece let out a long breath. “I’d imagine some kind of faulty intel. Maybe a leak, I don’t know. But Brigadier Lee wants you all extracted ASAP. He heard when things went south and wanted everyone to withdraw, but you were all already in the middle of it.”

“Okay, I’ll gather everyone. Out.”

She stood up, feeling the heaviness of her uniform down into her bones. Could Talon have just used her to kill a flock of civilians? Perhaps. However, an unwelcome thought was dancing across her consciousness, needling and unsettling her focus.  
...could it have been their own brass?

She seethed quietly as she put the call in for her men to haul ass and ensure their positions were clear before they moved out. The brass had wanted the gangs gone for a long time. Coupled with the politicians of each country, everyone wanted the easy way out, involving lots of boots on the ground and bullets. Fortunately for people like her—the ones who thought the military was _not_ a glorified police force, those actions had very bad optics internationally. Among the locals, historically militarisation was looked at poorly, even when most citizens were willing to pass it off as ‘necessary’ for their own safety. Sooner or later, they got sick of it. She truly wouldn’t have put it past the higher ups to have sent her down here, with the knowledge that things would go badly and she would have to clean house. They were low enough to use Talon’s goals to do what they wanted, if they saw the opportunity.

“Asuri. Lusca reporting, I don’t like what I’m hearing down here.”

“Copying. What’s that?”

“I’m hearing things falling. None of the men are picking up my pages.”

Veronica stiffened. She redeployed the cloak, and held her rifle at the ready. “Stay where you are, I’m coming.”

She stepped slowly and quietly down the stairs, turning down towards the living room, where the gang members’ corpses lay, undisturbed. Out on the porch, she spotted a coalition boot. Keeping towards cover, she peeked out.

One of hers, and he was very, very obviously dead, like the don was.

She swallowed hard. Turning slowly, her methodical search was cut short. Deep from inside the house, where she saw Davika’s boots earlier, there was a yell, and what sounded like a shotgun. She ran towards it, ignoring the bodies lying all along her path, and came to a skidding halt. Davika was scrabbling against a tall, shrouded figure that had her pinned up against the wall with one, gauntleted arm. With her superior strength, she should have been able to break out of it quickly, but she’d been shot—and it seemed as though her energy was quickly fading.

Veronica took aim and fired directly at the thing’s head, careful to angle her shot so it didn’t hit her friend if it was a through-and-through. The bullet sank right through, alright—but it seemed to fly into smoke, rather than flesh, and embedded in the wall next to him. The figure paused, looking directly at where Veronica would have been standing.

“Troublesome.”

He dropped Davika, who sank to the floor with her mahogany skin faded to a sickly grey. The shroud produced two shotguns—and with the spread they would’ve had, she’d be mincemeat if she didn’t get them out of his hands. The implant flared to life, sending what felt like adrenaline through her body, quickening her limbs. She dropped the rifle, picking instead the long, retractable chain whip from her side. She just needed to hit one arm—

The chain seemed to appear out of nowhere as it fell away from her cloak’s reach, wrapping around one wrist; she jerked it down, stamping on the taut whip for good measure and sending one gun flying, while it threw him off balance. Veronica flew forward, kicking the other away and reaching for her bowie knife. But then, the chain went slack.

It was like he’d evaporated.

The hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end as she turned swiftly, only to be pinned as Davika was. The cloak sputtered and died, revealing her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the body of her friend in the corner. She wasn’t breathing.

“Well, that was pathetic,” the voice behind the mask was gravelly, and cold.

Veronica gritted her teeth, but despite feeling the implant throbbing, her strength was waning. She could _feel_ it leaking away—was it him? She looked frantically around the room. Their extraction would be here soon, and they would only find bodies. The back of her head was beginning to have that numb, almost burning feeling—similar to being in a faint. She hissed as the cold steel of the gauntlet bit through her uniform and into her skin, and the man before her laughed.

She took a deep breath. The implant felt as though it was on fire.

Her hand came down, grasping the bowie knife and shoving it under the mask, With a grunt, the man drew back slightly—it seemed his little trick wasn’t one he could do too often. She shifted her grip and slammed it into his eye, unable to push it down to the hilt before the man dropped her and moved away. The burning had stopped, signalling the implant was almost empty, if it wasn’t already. As the man moved to pull the knife away, Veronica lurched forward. He’d expected her to, and he seemed to be waiting for an attack, but he grasped thin air.  
She dropped down, rolling to get behind him and then, back to her feet. With a thud, she dropped her single grenade. Whatever was left in the implant had been just enough, and she managed to throw herself towards the living room before the explosion went off.

The walls around her creaked, and she scrambled towards the doorway. At the porch, pieces of wood, stone and glass rained down upon her, and everything was lost to cool, dusty blackness.

\---

Jesse looked around the old Watchpoint. He’d settled into a room, wandered about and pushed away as much nostalgia as possible. In the common area, there was enough noise to make that difficult, however. The raucous voices made it seem like it was the old days. He turned the corner to find Angela Ziegler laughing, bringing a tray of what smelled like coffee to the lone, occupied table. On it was a strange assortment of people: Mei, the scientist, who’d apparently footed it from god-knows-where in Antarctica; Lena, busily filling the air with her thick British accent and the new one, that Dr. Ziegler had dragged back with her. He was grinning good-naturedly, though he still seemed a little unsure of himself.

He couldn’t blame the guy; apparently he’d been in Talon a while back. Jesse was sure the man half-expected that they’d throw him off the balcony.

There was a series of thuds behind him, and he turned to find Winston approaching.

“How’s Echo settling in?”

“She’s making do with what little we have,” Winston sighed. “It’s going to be a lot of trouble getting this operation working. We’re getting more and more agents, but,” he looked grim. “Lots of them are disappearing.”

“Until we start gettin’ to them first, that’s not gonna change,” he pointed out. “Someone’s being proactive. Maybe we should be, too.”

“Yes, well,” the gorilla moved off, walking towards the crop of noise-makers. “I’ve got a plan for that, in a sense. But we don’t have enough people. We’ll have to be smart about it.”

“Considering this is all we’ve got down here,” he frowned. “This is fixin’ to be a nightmare.”

“That’s very helpful.”

Dr. Ziegler spotted them and rose from her seat. “Winston, Jesse. Come sit.”

“I actually came here for Baptiste,” Winston turned to the man, who got up cautiously. “Oh, it’s not anything bad. It involves the matter we spoke about, when you came.”

“Oooooh, all those secrets,” Lena grinned. “When are we gonna find out?”

“Soon enough,” he answered. “Jesse, I wanted to talk to you too. We can do this in the lab.”

The journey was punctuated by silence, with the three making their way through the deserted halls of Watchpoint Gibralter. Aside from those assembled in the commons, there were only ten others, busily attending to their duties. The lab, as always, was chilly. He knew that Winston hated him smoking in there, but all this nonsense was giving him an ache for it.

“Okay,” Winston ensured the doors were secure. “It’s not that I’m worried about eavesdroppers, but this is sensitive.”

“What’s this all about?” Jesse looked between the two.

“Well, I thought a bit on it, Baptiste. About what you told me, when Angela brought you back here. I think we could use your old friend.”

Baptiste’s eyes widened. “Veronica? It’s a good move. I know she’d be helpful. Besides, if you let me contact her, I’m sure she’d be willing to—”

“I’m not sure I follow what you’re both yammering about,” Jesse cut in, feeling slightly put out. He hated all this secrecy.

“Right. You recall that Baptiste was a part of the Caribbean Coalition,” Winston looked at Jesse evenly. “Before his discharge, he worked with the ambassador of the coalition, a soldier named Veronica Francois. She is currently a key adviser to their leadership, and we are sitting on some very troubling information regarding the region. I think we can use her to gain a foothold, and thwart the destabilization that Talon seems to be planning.”

“And what do I have to do with it?”

“My sources say that she is going to be assigned long-term to the United States soon, on a mission to keep relations with the coalition strong. You work around the U.S., don’t you?”

“I ain’t fixin’ to get involved in politics,” Jesse lit his cigar, ignoring the annoyed look Winston shot him. “And you should know that. Are we that hard up for people?”

Winston gave him a disapproving huff. “Your comfort zone is the continental U.S. You’re best suited for this. Besides the politics, there is some action. You saw the reports when we got them.”

“We’re callin’ those _reports_ now? Jesus. I’ve seen more intel on fast food receipts.”

“Be serious, Jesse.”

He blew out some smoke and sighed. “I’m not good at this. You’re askin’ me to take on an assignment that I’m, number one, not interested in, and number two,” he ticked off his fingers, “I can’t do to the best of my ability. What am I missing here?”

“The ambassador of the Caribbean Coalition led a squad against a Talon force two days ago—it wasn’t a particularly large one, but they sustained many losses. One person in particular was there: the Talon agent called Reaper.”

“And?”

Winston looked at Jesse carefully. “I wasn’t looking forward to telling you this, but I suppose it’s time. We have it on good authority that Reaper is Gabriel Reyes.”

He sat up in his chair at once—the look on his face changed quickly, from disbelief, to grief, and now, something short of rage. “You’re shitting me. You better not be sayin’ this to get me—”

The pained look on his comrade’s face seemed to be enough, and Jesse stopped mid-sentence. “We tried our hardest to avoid it too. But we can’t. Colonel Veronica Francois, Ambassador of the Caribbean Coalition, survived a run-in with him. She obviously doesn’t know who he is, but she’s one of the few who has taken him on directly and lived to talk about it. I thought you’d be interested in following up.”

“Got all her limbs?” he looked down at his own cybernetic hand and frowned. His mind was _racing_.

“Supposedly. They say she sustained various injuries, the most serious being a deep set of lacerations to the—right shoulder,” Winston checked his notes for the details. “She blew up most of the house she was in, so she’s been laid out for a bit. We’ve got a device in their base, and it seems she’s our best bet for a liaison.”

Baptiste nodded. “She’s a compassionate woman. Give her a way to protect the people of the region, and she will make it happen. She’s always thought highly of Overwatch, and she will argue for the Coalition to hear us out.”

“Someone who still thinks the best of Overwatch? Where’s she been for the past decade?”

Winston frowned.“Well, I don’t think she’ll be stupidly accommodating. That’s why we need to tread carefully and do this right. I think you’re the best man for the job.”

Jesse stared at him for a minute, unmoving, before snuffing out the cigar in the tray before him. It seemed like Winston had known this conversation would drive him to smoke. “Fine. But I’m doing this so we can find out what the hell happened with Reyes.”

\---

The first thing she saw as she opened her eyes, wincing past the sting of fluorescent light, was Solomon. He looked peaky, slumped uncomfortably in a folding chair with his hand held on his forehead, shielding his eyes as he slept. An array of cups and wrappers around him signalled he’d been there for a while.

Everything ached. She moved to sit up, groaning at the assortment of stinging that peppered her body. With a start, Solomon sat upright.

“Veronica,” he rubbed his eyes frantically. It wasn’t often that he used her name—but it usually came after something catastrophic.

The events of the operation came back to her in a flurry and she stared at him evenly. “How badly did it go?”

He sighed, and the look he gave her was uncharacteristically stricken. “It’s just you.”

She looked down at her hands, covered in scratches and cuts. “Davika—was she gone before the explosion?”

“Yes,”

She took a shuddering breath. Relief, but also a keen sadness that was settling into her bones. “What was her cause of death?”

“They haven’t done the autopsy yet,” Solomon told her. “It’s been an ongoing nightmare here with all the bad press. When they came to get you out, they brought multiple squads, and it got ugly fast.”

Veronica closed her eyes. More dead. And for what?

“When is the post-mortem?”

“I’m not sure, but Dr. Yueng is coming in this evening. I imagine it’ll be soon.”

“Tell him I need to be there,”

“Veronica, you survived getting half a house thrown onto you,” his voice was firm, but she could tell that he was trying to be gentle with her. “You don’t need to see that right now. You can watch the tape or something if you want to.”

“Davika and I knew each other since we were six years old. If my actions had you lying on a cold slab, you can bet your ass I’d be there to see what I’d done too.”

“You can’t blame yourself.”

“I led them there. I made the calls. I don’t even know what hit us,”

“Intelligence says it is a Talon agent called Reaper. The U.S. government had been keeping that little tidbit from us, but came clean after all hell broke loose.”

“Get me a dossier on him as soon as you can. Now, I need you to go find out when this post mortem is, and get me a wheelchair or something.”

“I’m not going to be able to stop you, am I?” he sounded bitter, yet slightly amused.

“No.”

“Fine. In any case, my mother was harassing me about visiting you. You got transferred to the university hospital after you were picked up, so she’s in the area. She has red beans and rice.”

Veronica forced herself to smile. She could feel very little at the moment, but she knew the old lady meant well. She’d taken on the little orphaned girl like a daughter when Solomon was chosen to join the coalition’s school.

“I haven’t had your mom’s cooking in a while. It sounds like a plan.”

“Yeah, she keeps complaining that all you make is foreign garbage. She still ate the last clafoutis though. While she complained.”

Veronica watched him leave before staring up at the water-stained ceiling. Was there anything she could do to mentally prepare herself for what she’d asked to see?

Well, she’d find out the hard way. And right now, she was in the mood to be punished.

Later in the day, she was wheeled down to the morgue. The place stank of formaldehyde, bleach and death—a very particular combination that stuck with you. They’d given her a protective gown to wear over her hospital clothes, as well as two masks—a regular, standard issue face mask, and the shields that looked like the protection she often saw men using when they cut the grass.

Dr. Yeung was similarly suited up, though, he had a thick pair of gloves on. He turned sorrowful eyes to her, his voice slightly muffled by the masks. “I’m sorry to see you here like this, Colonel.”

She knew it had hit him hard too—even without his curiosity surrounding the soldiers of Unit 809, he’d been their physician since they were children. He already had to autopsy two of them in the past, she wasn’t sure how he’d handle this one.

The other doctor was a military physician, who came in with his junior assistants. She was sure that the whole team had been flown out just for this. They wouldn’t trust such an important job to anyone outside the coalition. The juniors had wheeled in the gurney, complete with a black body bag. Veronica took an intake of breath as she saw it. In there was her friend.

Her smartass, beautiful, lively friend.

The one who was never stationed home, and would likely be sent back in a jar. Would she want to be spread in the rainforests? She always liked to hike.

They opened the bag, with each military member saluting—save for Dr. Yueng, a civilian. Veronica struggled to stand, doing the same. Her eyes burned, but not from the pain in her joints. She watched them move the bits and pieces of Davika’s unnaturally pale body to the table before she sat down again.

Davika had died before she’d used the grenade, yes. But that—that desecration was done by her. The fact that she was dead to begin with, was also quite frankly, her fault as the squad leader.

Veronica did not shy away from looking at every cut. This was a burden she needed to bear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "one from ten leaves nought" is a quote from Eric Williams, a Caribbean leader and scholar during the collapse of the West Indies Federation ;)
> 
> Veronica Francois is also named in part for my Grenadian great-grandmother, and also in part after Elma Francois, an activist and participant in the Butler Riots in 1937.


End file.
